Talk:Ion (window manager)

Sorry about the confusion in the history. I thought maybe it would be a candidate for speedy deletion, but upon reading further I decided it should just be a copyvio. Timc 02:09, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I have written a stub on the new temporary page.Tim Ivorson 15:34, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Ion4 / Notion / future
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.139.161.106 (talk) 07:07, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

The above link times out for me. It's also exceptionally old (April 2008). In the 11 years since I haven't heard any mention whatsoever of an Ion4.

Ion3 is quite dead and abandoned now, Valkonen never touched it again and it has since been superseded by the fork Notion (Not-ion) which has seen continuous maintenance since it's release almost a decade ago. New development has been happening to Notion in 2019 with some improvements in floating dialog windows (which was quite surprising when I first saw it - ion and then Notion have been functionally static for so long now).

I humbly suggest renaming this page 'Notion (window manager)', updating the introduction appropriately and removing Notion from the 'alternatives' section. Also, the larger version of that screenshot appears to be broken for me.

For now I've updated the 'alternatives' section with an external link to the Notion website and elaborated on it's supported platforms.

I agree, but being involved with Notion's development means I'm biased. I'd appreciate if someone else would write the article. A notion 4 release under the plain LGPL v2.1+ with all non-LGPL parts rewritten is currently underway. Ion3 is no longer packaged in any of the distributions I've checked. --84.115.2.34 (talk) 14:14, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Desktop Enviroment?
What Desktop Enviroment Ion uses? can anyone add this piece of information? --Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.81.23.155 - 09:42, 22 July 2005


 * Most ion users won't use one. Except on floating workspaces there is never a desktop visible for the usual icon clutter. As with any window manager you can optionally run applications that come with (eg) Gnome or KDE.
 * Recent versions of ion have their own application menu and a window-maker dock, but most ion users probably prefer using the commandline. --Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.40.213.241 - 12:05, 16 August 2005


 * Ion is a Window Manager. Like any window manager, it can be used as a wm for an existing DE like GNOME or Xfce. Also like any window manager, it can also be used standalone, i.e. without a Desktop Environment.
 * Ion, like xmonad and i3, is a standalone wm. I.e. it was created as an independent project, instead of being created specifically for a particular DE (like metacity for GNOME, and kwin for KDE)
 * In other words, Ion doesn't use a Desktop Environment. But you can configure it to be used as the WM for a DE if you so wish. 198.59.155.130 (talk) 20:29, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Misrepresentation of Arch Controversy
The text says that Tuomo threatened to sue, however the linked mailing list post mentions only that "there may be legal repercussions". Surely the two are not always the same?

I'm also not sure if his opinion on open source software or his intentions to leave are relevant to the controversy itself, much less the Ion3 window manager.

It's possible the section needs some expanding as well. Tuomo Valkonen's primary claim was that distributing ion3 with third party patches named as if it was the official ion3 was infringing his trademark. Many people confused this with other legal issues such as copyright violation. This, in combination with several flame wars on various mailing lists, has resulted in ion3 being removed from some distrobutions, rather than renamed which was all that was required.

If someone thinks something similar to the above has a place on the main page I can have a crack at writing a section with references. Nigel McNie 13:09, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree - Tuomo's threats and aggravations, against distributors and other things, were rather vague and hand-wavy (if very intense), less pointed than this suggests.

Then again, at the moment this is a rather polite way of saying Tuomo is nuts, which I think can be inferred from any reading of the ion mailing list. --68.212.72.30 02:04, 18 June 2007 (UTC)


 * He's also claimed "license violations" in NetBSD's pkgsrc because the package was out of date. . The general reaction seems to be "delete it entirely; it's not worth his hassle." --moof 08:31, 29 October 2007 (UTC)


 * He claimed more, stating that pkgsrc build facility can be considered a derivative work of the packages that it builds... He also stated: You know, I can always modify the license for future releases to not allow any particular name you choose. (It's not trademark-only.) --Ittakezou0 (talk) 17:31, 3 July 2008 (UTC)


 * "There may be legal repercussions" is enough to be scared of a lawsuit. The words of the author are not that kind of friendly nor reasonable. This software should not be considered a (L)GPL software, since the modified license adds clauses incompatible with original LGPL. The author talked about trademark infringiment of the name Ion. The patches simply added features Valkonen does not like, e.g. the use of the Xft/fontconfig AntiAliased fonts. Because of this, he says those (derivative) works must not use the name of Ion (or having it as a part), and that distributors was trying to deceive users (so according to him their behaviour was a fraud). There's enough to be scared about. --Ittakezou0 (talk) 17:31, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

In the infobox it says the license is "LGPL with non-free clauses". How is it possible to mix LGPL with non-free clauses and still call it LGPL? And doesn't this make the software non-FOSS? So how can it be part of Linux distros at all?--87.162.27.188 (talk) 15:36, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, it's basically his own custom license that builds upon the LGPL. Whether it can still be considered FOSS is for the lawyers to decide, as far as I know he only objects to modified versions using the same name, you can still look at and modify the source code, which is what counts. Distros are free to include all levels of non-free software to their repository, btw. There are just individual distributions (debian as far as I know is the most prominent one) that have a free-software-only rule. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gerald Jarosch (talk • contribs) 19:15, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Opinions
I must first say, I dont like his Ego. BUT whatever is written in a mailling list by him should recieve LESS PRIORITY than REAL ACTIONS. So far, Ion is still open source and before he *really* changes this approach, this article here should NOT HINT at it. Because, hinting at something which does NOT happen, is pure speculation guys! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.108.103.172 (talk) 03:00, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, let me first of all just say that I did talk to the author personally and the view presented on this Wikipedia article are indeed not his intentions. However, the posts in question could at least be interpreted as him intending to close the source after the final release of version 3, which would've been perfecly consistent with his actions so far so talking about actions here are meaningless. Debolaz 11:24, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
 * And even if his actions are different than his words it would be more consistent with wikipedia to publish the inconsistencies than to remove the cited letters that are yet disputed as coming from the author. Censoring the article for the hope that the author forgets what he wrote, or so as to let this blow off, seems to go against WP:CENSOR. EvanCarroll 03:36, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Use the google: http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?p=69724#69724 "Or I could make it closed source, but I thought Ion3 would be my final gift to the FOSS herd, that it can never hope to repay. After that I'll be sticking to writing closed source -- perhaps for Windows. The FOSS herd simply isn't worth my work." —Preceding unsigned comment added by TheNewLayoutSucks (talk • contribs) 09:01, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

License
The license is listed as LGPL. This is blatantly incorrect. It is a modified version of it which is no-longer free and no longer FSF or OSI approved. Older version of ion were LGPL and not-proprietary but now Ion is using a license which is not an open-source license (OSI's trademark). I'm just not sure what to say the license it, saying it is a custom-LGPL gives the impression it is open-source when in fact it is a proprietary license with the source available. --SingleIssueComplainer (talk) 22:31, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Dynamic wm
I undid the change that said Ion was a dynamic window manager. It is not. With the definition provided under Dynamic window manager Ion would be dynamic but this definition is wrong as I've already said on the discussion page Talk:Dynamic_window_manager (a year ago). A source for this is the clear statement under [] that says it is static and the sources I provided on said discussion page. I found no source that would support the definition used in the Dynamic window manager page, the german article that is used as the source in this article says _nothing_ of that sort. I write this here in the hope that a native speaker could help to correct the Dynamic window manager article. I already called attention to this a year ago, but the article is still the same, as I'm not a native speaker I think my english is not good enough to change it myself. --Pp323 (talk) 14:12, 22 August 2010 (UTC)